War Thunder Flies Onto SHIELD Android TV

Russian developer Gaijin Entertainment has captivated PC and PlayStation 4 gamers with its World War II game War Thunder. Now the free-to-play war simulation, which features planes, tanks and ships from the Second World War, is going mobile, thanks to the power of the SHIELD Android TV. Anton Yudintsev, CEO of Gaijin Entertainment, talks about the mobile game and the technology in this exclusive interview.

What’s the gameplay experience like for War Thunder?
War Thunder is all about the vehicles of World War II, including the planes, tanks and ships used by the Allied and Axis powers. Right now the game is already presenting more than 300 different World War II planes up to the Korean War and we are launching our player controlled tanks soon. It’s going to be a huge vehicle simulation where everything is going to be on the same game map. You’ll be able to bomb enemy tiger tanks driven by real players. It will create huge epic-scaled battles.

The game is on PC and PS4. How have you worked with NVIDIA to bring War Thunder to the mobile space?
We’ve been working to bring War Thunder to mobile for over a year. We started communicating with NVIDIA because we don’t want to make any compromises in terms of quality. Right now the only mobile hardware which is capable of running War Thunder at a really good quality level without any compromises is a newest NVIDIA Tegra X1 chip, so we’ll definitely be there. War Thunder is a superior game in terms of graphical quality and visual technology and we really don’t want to water it down from the PC and console versions. Right now Tegra X1 is the only hardware which is running War Thunder without any compromises.

What do you think about the Tegra X1 technology?
Tegra X1 is the beginning of a new generation of mobile devices where mobile chip sets are capable of running PC and console games at a really high quality level. It ends the days of having to dumb down the gameplay and make some cheap version of the game. Tegra X1 is just the beginning. I hope there will be more different hardware from NVIDIA, but it is really amazing how quickly things have progressed. Really soon there will be no difference between your smartphone, your tablet and your gaming laptop. It will be the same thing in terms of graphics quality and hardware. We’re really amazed by what the NVIDIA guys are doing.

What do you see mobile opening up for people to play from anywhere versus having to be in front of a PC or PS4?
It’s a new trend. The more people start to play on mobile or tablets instead of PC or console, they’ll want to play more than Angry Birds. They want to have hardcore games on their smartphones and on their tablets. That changes the gameplay experience overall because when you’re playing in the living room it’s a 10-foot experience, when you’re playing on the PC it’s also specific because you are alone there and you have time. Playing on mobile means that you’re probably not at home, but playing away like on a bus or on an airplane with a lot of people around you. However, it’s hard to predict how the gaming industry overall will be changed by that. It’s just the beginning of new era. I don’t know how it will turn out.